Repressing Memories
by Vampire Louis
Summary: Sometimes when something horrible happens, the mind will repress the memories to save the witness from the tragedy. Uchiha Sasuke knows something as gone wrong but cannot find the source of it. Slight AU. SasuNaruSasu character death.


**Repressing Memories**

Chapter: One shot

Pairing: NaruSasuNaru

Rated: Pg13

Warnings: Character deaths.

Legal stuff: Well... I think it's obvious but I'll state it anyway. I don't own Naruto. Please don't sue me? I'm poor... seriously..._;;

Author notes: Wow... my first Naruto fic. Excited? I am lol.

Thanks to: Everyone who reads my work. Including my lovely wife and my sweetest darling for encouraging me ^_^!

~*~

Once again, something in the life of Uchiha Sasuke had gone horribly wrong.

And yet, for the life of him, he couldn't recall what it was.

The depression was there, thick and inky black as ever; the feeling of a monumental loss was there, but the source of these emotions was curiously missing. Not even the vaguest trace of sensations to explain the holes in the walls or the doors that had been ripped off their hinges. Whatever had happened, he apparently hadn't taken it well.

Kakashi was the first to make an appearance since the morning of no memory began. With the older ninja came food that was quietly prepared in the kitchen while Sasuke watched - a bit perplexed at the situation unfolding before him. Kakashi, the ever-later-ever-lazy, was by NO means a caregiver…and yet there he was, standing in the middle of the kitchen cooking for Sasuke.

"How are you feeling?" The copy nin inquired, stirring the vegetables into the rice.

The younger of the two shrugged, unsure of how to answer that question. He _felt_ fine but the shattered pieces of furniture stern about the house stated otherwise.

"Have you done any exercises?"

Again, the Uchiha shrugged, "I did some Taijutsu this morning." It was better than sitting around starring at the holes in the wall.

"Ah. That's good."

And then the silence came back, rushing in with waves of oppressing quiet that neither of them bothered to break. That was the thing about Kakashi that most never had the privilege of knowing, when left to his own devices he became exceptionally mute. The rest of the jounin's stay went approximately like that, albeit with a slight variation in positioning followed by short questions with even shorter answers and longer bouts of silence. It all made very little sense but then, what didn't?

By the time late afternoon rolled around it was Sakura's turn to show up. She brought dinner and noisy chatter -making Sasuke wonder why he even bothered to let her in. He had never been particularly fond of her, disliking the idea of someone clinging to his side like a lifeline when they could barely manage to carry their own weight, and yet he opened the door anyway. Allowing her to enter his home without so much as a second thought. Maybe it was the red around her eyes or maybe it was the particularly worn look she possessed -whatever the case may be, there she was... sitting at his dinning table drinking weak tea. He couldn't remember what they talked about but he supposed it didn't matter, few conversations with Sakura ever really did.

When she finally departed, leaving leftovers in her stead, Sasuke found himself feeling exhausted. More exhausted than he usually felt even when under the influence of a rough day of training. How peculiar. Eventually he rationed that people (even people close to him) were simply not his forte and put an obvious tax on his emotional reserves that were already lacking.

For the sake of his sanity, Sasuke spent the rest of the daylight hours venting his frustrations in the form of target practice. It helped a little –the slightest sense of satisfaction that bubbled up every time his kunai hit the center of its intended destination with a practiced "thump". And yet somehow the time felt particularly wasted and an inexplicable emptiness began rising in the center of his chest like a black hole waiting to consume him the minute he stopped resisting it.

Strange. How very strange indeed.

It was close to midnight before HE finally showed up. The idiot hadn't even bothered to knock like the other two, instead he apparently decided that breaking into a home and pilfering through the owner's belongings was perfectly acceptable. Okay... well, maybe starring at some displayed weapons on the wall wasn't exactly _pilfering_ but to Sasuke it might as well have been.

"What are you doing here dobe?" The Uchiha crossed his arms and leaned on the doorframe, agitation rippling up his spine at the very site of the blond.

Naruto actually had the gall to look surprised, as if he hadn't expected Sasuke to catch him. Truth be told, Sasuke may NOT have caught him if his charcoal grey eyes hadn't suddenly been drawn towards the room he was passing. This intensely irritated him. Whether it was from the fact that Naruto would enter his home without asking or from the fact that he managed to do it without getting noticed was still under consideration.

"_I_ _said_..." the young man grumbled, "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you... I guess."

Sasuke stared, then frowned, then moved into the kitchen to get some tea.

"Oi! Bastard! You don't look so good..."

The brunette glared but otherwise did not respond. It was true, he looked terrible but far be it from him to admit that to Naruto.

"What's up with you?" The blond continued, following his teammate into the other room in his usual laid back and obnoxious manor, "Sasuke never lets himself go THIS much."

It irked the Uchiha that, once again, Naruto had been right. Though few people were aware of it, Sasuke made a point of looking presentable. Not from vanity so much as from the inability to look weak. If you were well groomed and flawless in appearance, subconsciously, your enemies begin to apply that to other areas of your life. It was the "intimidation factor", as he liked to call it.

And yet, when he had gotten up this morning to go about his usual routine, he had been shocked by what he found in the mirror. Eyes rimmed red -puffy from obvious crying, nose just as scarlet on a face that was a chalky white. Not that he wasn't always naturally pale to begin with but this was different. This was just outright sickly. And the fever he apparently caught wasn't helping either.

The frown grew deeper upon the young man's face. What could have possibly happened that would have such a colossal effect on him?

The mind was still drawing blanks.

"I don't know." He commented at last, pouring two cups of tea to keep his hands busy.

"Well do something about it. Your fan girls will throw themselves into hysterics if they see you like this." It wasn't that Naruto cared or anything.

Sasuke snorted, placing a teacup in front of the blond. It wasn't possible for Naruto to care.

"Ne, Sasuke..." The shift in tone startled the dark haired youth into looking at his teammate. "Why are you crying?"

~*~

Morning trickled in through the bedroom window, pooling on the hard wood floors to illuminate the room in ways that made sleeping unpleasant. Sasuke decided that he felt worse than yesterday.

The smell of rice cooking drifted through the tiny bedroom and the youngest Uchiha knew it meant that Kakashi had let himself in. What was with these people and their inability to knock? Slowly, the chunin crawled out of bed and stumbled his way down the stairs, avoiding the bathroom and its hideous mirror which mocked him from the corner of his eye.

"Oi. You're up late."

The younger ninja shrugged. This was apparently becoming a common motion for him to make in response to anything Kakashi had to say.

"Did you have company over last night?"

Dark eyes shifted over to the teacups sitting pristinely on the kitchen counter. One empty and the other still full.

"No."

"Oh." The silver haired man nodded, adding meat to the eggs and rice. Evidently he was done interrogating for the day, which was fine because Sasuke didn't feel like talking. Not that he ever really felt like talking but lately his voice was strained and his throat was raw from the theoretical overuse of nothing in particular.

"Toast?" The older nin offered while the younger one sat down at the table and found himself shrugging again. He really needed to break himself of that habit.

The meal went as quietly as usual and when they were done, Kakashi left without saying another word. The silence was pleasant. Pleasant enough that when Sakura came around later, he feigned sick and told her to go away. It wasn't entirely inaccurate -he WAS running a bit of a fever at this point but it was hardly anything to be concerned about.

When evening turned into night and the stars twinkled in their jealous sky above the Uchiha residence, Sasuke found himself being woken up by a brisk brush of air. At first he insisted on ignoring it, favoring sleep over anything else. However, when the room finally dropped to arctic temperatures, he decided it was time to react.

Cracking open an eye, the first thing that caught the young man's attention was the open window at the foot of his bed... and the blond sitting in the sill of it. Fucking Naruto. Leave it up to the dobe to be the source of all his aggravation.

"Close the window." He grumbled, pulling the blankets around his body a little tighter.

"YOU close the window if you don't want it open."

Sasuke glared, "You're closer to it."

"You're the only one bothered by it."

Familiar anger washed over the youth, turning already flushed cheeks into an interesting splash of crimson on white. Stupid stubborn sonofa- the covers went sailing over the chunin's head as he jumped off the bed and stormed over the window, successfully slamming it down in Naruto's face.

"Idiot."

"Bastard."

The Uchiha stormed back to his bed as absolute quiet found its way back into the room, filling the place with its weighty presence. For once, Sasuke was not happy about it. He wasn't sure why but something about silence and Naruto being in the same room bothered him. It simply wasn't natural.

"Ne, Sasuke..."

"Hm?"

"Do you ever wonder what happens to the clones when they disappear?"

The anger melted into confusion as the young genius paused in his motions of arranging bed covers to turn and look at his teammate. "What?"

"You know, when you use the Bushin jutsu... do you ever wonder what happens to the clones when they vanish? If they worry about getting destroyed as much as we do. If they ever get sad about dying..."

Sasuke continued to stare, "They're just clones, Naruto."

"But what if, " The blond hesitated, refusing to meet his teammate's stare, "even for a second.... they thought they were real?"

The Uchiha glowered at that before realizing how much he didn't want to be having this conversation with Naruto. "It's just a jutsu." He swallowed hard against a strange lump in his throat, "They're not real."

"Ne, Sasuke..."

Dark eyes caught faded blue.

"You don't look so good."

~*~

On the third day, the mighty avenger slept through Kakashi's visit. There was food left out for him but his stomach protested and he opted to take a long shower instead. It was a sad attempted at fixing the mess he had let himself become. And, distantly, he wondered why he even let himself go in the first place, then wondered why he as bothering to fix it. No one who mattered was around to see him.

When the sun began its early decent, Sakura knocked politely at his door. A bit humored by the fact that she was the only one around with any sense of manors, he considered allowing her entrance. However, instead of doing just that, he called through the door and said he still wasn't feeling well. Naturally she was hesitant but the pink haired girl eventually left when she got tired of the silence that answered her questions.

She really tried much too hard.

And once he was sure of her departure, Sasuke went back to his room and decided to clean it. Somehow his room had manage to get trashed just like the rest of his house and he still wasn't sure why. After all, there wasn't a reason for it.

Two hours and one bath later, the room was spotless. However the person responsible for the sudden cleanliness he found himself acting more sluggish than usual. He blamed it on the fever, which he belatedly realized was beginning to feel a little worse. Talk about lame.

Sasuke almost never got sick -having an amazing immunity was just apart of being an Uchiha. Any yet, once in a great blue moon when he actually DID managed to catch something, it stuck. And it stuck hard.

"You should be in bed." Naruto commented from the windowsill. When had he arrived?

"Mind your own business." The young man muttered but made his way towards the comfortable mattress anyway. It felt so good to lay down... he couldn't imagine ever wanting to get back up.

"Tired?"

"Hm." Dark eyes were drooping shut and he could feel his system slowing down in preparation for a long sleep.

"Sasuke?"

"What are you doing here, dobe?"

The blond smiled , "Waiting for you." And the Uchiha felt himself smile back as he glanced at the picture of team seven on his nightstand. He had framed it while cleaning and placed it back to where it should have been all along.

"I'm really tired Naruto." Sasuke's vision had started to fade around the edges.

"So sleep. I'll be here waiting for you when you wake up."

"Why?"

Naruto grinned, "Because you're Sasuke and I'm Naruto, why else?"

The avenger smiled in spite of himself, "Because you're an idiot."

And the blond laughed, "Yeah, perhaps you're right."

~*~

One week earlier..

How does one go about apologizing to the lives that can no longer forgive them?

The beeps and clicks vibrated audibly throughout the room, resonating off the walls to fill the small area with a synthetic heartbeat that only vaguely imitated the real rhythm. The one that was struggling to beat continuously inside the body which laid morosely across the sheets, pale and dismal in comparison to most other things about it. This dreary thing upon the bed had been there for three days before it stirred, shifting itself into the attention of everyone in the room.

The thing that lulled into consciousness was merely a shell echoing the life it had once contained. Though somehow, despite this, all those who stood and sat about it waited for that shell to wake up, begging for a sign that it was slightly more conscious than the bed upon which it rested.

"Sasuke?"

The hush held true but the attention was shifted to allow the match up of blue eyes with grey, a silent answer for an unspoken question.

"You don't look so good." The crack of lips formed a hesitant smile to which Sasuke could barely mimic in a vain attempt to reciprocate what it meant to smile.

"You don't look so hot yourself, dobe."

There were three other pairs of eyes attentively watching in the background but the three pairs of lips connected to the same faces did not dare to utter a sound in the wake of the picturesque film before them. Two people isolated from the world and yet so dually entwined within it, unable to break away but forever remaining segregated to everything except each other. Like two melting candles amongst an ocean of darkness, slowly burning down to nothing as they mix together and blend the seam which had, until now, divided them.

"I'm sorry..." the voice was wavering on the edge of something more profound, all laughter and jokes fading away to the solemnity of what was needing to be said. Such an important thing in a time like this was only understated by the relaxed and uncomposed expression held by both the giver and the receiver of said words.

"You have nothing to be sorry for." The second refused as he always did, shaking his head in an attempted to keep all the cracks hidden beneath the surface.

"I'm sorry that I tainted your revenge." The first continued on, ignoring the restitution he was being given by the sole object of his observance.

"Naruto..."

"But I'm not sorry for what I did. If you had died there…" he faded off, leaving the retrospect of horrific events behind him. If Sasuke had died at the hand of his own revenge, swallowed up and cast aside by what was left of his life, Naruto would have never been able to move on. He spent so much time and effort retrieving the bastard from the grips of hell that he refused to let that victory be overshadowed by a meaningless death at the hands of someone who didn't care.

"Dobe..." The warning tone was ilicted but dutifully ignored.

"And I'm sorry..." The blond paused to catch his breath, shifting in his little bed where the white was overwhelming and seemed to make his affably tan complexion stark and obscure in contrast. Remaining spots of blood which had not been cleaned off the nearly flawless skin was marring the ethereal illusion that might be given to a person encased in white, yet the remains of battle seemed fitting given the situation at hand.

The beeping machines wavered in their convictions, the sounds seeming softer and less resilient than before.

"I'm sorry that you're going to have to be alone again."

Sasuke's mouth parted to protest and was faced with the opposition of fingertips brushing up against those very lips, ceasing the noise effectively inside his throat where it died and never surfaced again.

"I didn't mean to make you face this world alone again, and for that... I'm sorry." Slowly eyelids grew heavy and a hysteria rose in the faces of the mute three behind them, one moving quickly to the door to call for backup and the others rushing forward in a blur of urgency.

Background noise. They were all merely framework to the moments brushed between these two and they knew it, always aware that in the life of the Uchiha and the Uzumaki, everyone would eventually fade into the backdrop of white clamor before completely vanishing out of their existence all together. Barely vague impressions left behind on a beach with a rising tide.

"You don't have to leave!" Desperation colored fear in a shrill wave of panicked vibrations, eyes franticly darting around while looking for signs of hope amongst the swell of waxen blankets and clicking contraptions.

"I hope..." he inhaled gently, languidly allowing the hand to drift down from the lips he had always particularly admired, from the face he had watched over the years and always strove to keep close to. Sliding down the neck, the shoulder and the arm of someone who meant so much more than he could ever admit in one lifetime. "You will someday forgive... me... and you." The blond was drawing on his last few breaths and the other couldn't understand why it had to be so.

Why did everyone always leave him behind?

Gradually cerulean blue eyes turned over to glance at one of the background images always holding attendance in his world, stark white hair falling flat from being unkempt and mistreated with neglect.

"Take care of them..." He was referring to the team, his team, in a plea with eyes that seemed so sad, so desperate to say these words as the light grew dimmer around the edges and things began to dissipate and fade out of his existence. There was more, so much more that couldn't be translated into words for the lack of time and the complexity in which it took to do such a task. Merely the essential was to be spoke, and to Naruto...

Eyes traced their way back to the face that was a pale vision of beauty, perfect in its fallen composure of distraught misery.

To Naruto, Sasuke had always been the essential.

"Sasuke..." Lips parted one more time as the hint of a truer emotion flickered through dulling eyes, displaying the finial stage of what their rivalry had led them to. The oldest and purest of emotions pressed forward as silent lips formed the words that the voice couldn't mange to articulate, merely displaying the ghost of what lay in the heart of the dying in an expression which was utterly unmatched.

The words never came before the tan hand slipped free of its hold and landed softly against the white drapery of his bed, all the while resting there as blue eyes fell shut, never to be opened again.

The clicks came to a halt and the beeping turned into a continuous line of sound, a sickening noise that pierced the air with its atrociously strident ways. But all this was drowned into the milieu as the two key figures of a monumental play gave their last act and then took their finial bow.

The background noise slipped into silence and the world around the remaining actor crumbled into pieces. The heart mimicking the same pattern in the stillness of the storm.

"Please...." He begged, reaching out in vain, "don't go..."

But it was too late, and none of the fading figures behind him could lift their voice to tell him so.

~*~

Sakura simply stared at the grey sky for a long time without moving. The clouds threatened rain but they had been threatening that all day and she was a far cry from caring.

"I'm really mad at those two." The girl finally remarked, a frown marring her elegant features as she glared at the vast empty space of endless grey above them.

Kakashi turned to look at her -arching one eyebrow at the comment. "Why?"

"Because they're so bloody selfish!" She huffed "It's always Sasuke and Naruto. Naruto and Sasuke. They never think about anyone else but each other! It's not fair!" She crossed her arms around herself, biting back the feelings which were trying to surface in her eyes.

"Sakura..." The Jonin began, calculating exactly what to say and how to say it.

"It's true!" She felt exasperated and finally allowed her green eyes to slip over to her former teacher. "Sasuke gave his life up for that idiot when we fought mist. Gave up his quest, his vengeance... he gave it all up just to save Naruto! And after all that work it took to get him back into the village after he killed Orochimaru... he did it again!"

"You blame Naruto for this then?"

"No." The kunoichi pouted, looking towards the ground for answers, "I blame them both. Naruto killed himself saving Sasuke from Itachi and Sasuke killed himself just to chase after Naruto. They deserve each other, the inconsiderate bastards."

Kakashi felt himself smile for the first time in a long time. His eye focussed on the heavens above until the thunder clapped in the distance and the rain began to fall.

"I suppose it was meant to be."

"They're still selfish. Only thinking about each other..."

"Some would call that a true rivalry." The copy nin mused, the smile still ghosting across his half masked face.

"Or friendship." the girl mumbled in agreement.

"Or love." Another voice broke in once Iruka joined their little gathering by the memorial.

"Or love." Kakashi nodded, which only caused the youngest of the group to scoff. For losing two of her closest friends within the same two weeks, Sakura was taking it remarkably well.

"Whatever. I hope they're happy with themselves." The truth behind her comment dulled the sharp edge of her bitterness.

"Me too." Iruka nodded with the faintest of smiles peaking out behind the tears, "Me too..."

"Come on, let's head home." The sound of thunder rang out once more and Kakashi turned away from the stones, leading the group back to the inner city structure of Konoha. He didn't have to hope that they were happy because he knew that if those two idiots were together then they were bound to be happy, plain and simple. Like Sakura said earlier, they deserved each other and, in the end, that's exactly what they got.


End file.
